Mashable turned us onto an incredibly well thought-out campaign for Warner Bros’ next flick in the Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises. The film’s new site, launched this past Friday, mysteriously compelled only the most hardcore fans to figure out that the page was essentially a treasure hunt. The site greets visitors with a black screen set to the tune of chanting – and no other content. One resourceful SuperHeroHype forum member named ‘Riskproduction’ used an audio program to figure out that the audio’s spectrum spelled out #thefirerises.

From there, the Twitter account @TheFireRises linked to a site featuring an image of super villain ‘Bane’ – the image, amazingly, is made up of Twitter or Facebook profile photos of people that shared the site on their social networks.

We loved this campaign for rewarding early, ingenious fans with a form of personal recognition for their resourceful ‘find’. While a film and franchise like Batman comes with a built-in, die-hard fanbase, there’s no reason brands can’t learn from this game like, mysterious treasure hunt – and reward & recognize fans for their resourcefulness and desire to share.